


Terminal Line

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [8]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Horror, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-19
Updated: 2009-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After reporting Katrina's death to the police, Spike and Buffy have a conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terminal Line

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the same universe as _A Raising in the Sun_, _Necessary Evils_, et. al. (See the [Barbverse Timeline](http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/viewpage.php?page=timeline) for specifics.) It contains spoilers for previous works in the series. This story was a charity ficlet for Herself, who wanted Buffy and Spike talking. Normally I avoid stories which re-write an episode of canon, but this is set during my 'verse's equivalent of _Dead Things._

"...and why were you in the graveyard at that hour of the night?"

Buffy shifted in the slippery chair, trying to find something to do with her hands that wasn't a defensive cross-armed clench. The room was alien-autopsy bright, and the table stretched out in front of her as if just waiting for the dismembered corpse. "We were making out," she said. The first two or three times the question had come around she'd been embarrassed, but by now she was just tired and bored and hungry. She restrained herself from making a face at the one-way mirror behind which other specimens of Sunnydale's finest were probably rubbernecking. _My demon lover was fucking me blind over a tombstone. Wanna see?_ "We go there a lot. It's... private."

Detective Ng glanced at his notes. He was a lean, compactly muscled man, on the short side of average, with an ageless face and penetrating black-currant eyes. Not a big doughnut fan. He looked vaguely familiar; maybe he was one of the officers who'd come out that night one of the crazies had broken into Dawn's room. "It's not a safe area at night," he observed. "Especially in a town like Sunnydale. Some of those crypts have squatters--junkies, homeless..."

"I know. We--" she broke off and tried to look properly chastened and grateful. "We're always careful."

Another pen-flourish. They had a tape recorder going; what was Ng taking notes of? The door to the interrogation room opened, and a uniformed patrolman walked in and handed the detective a folder. He opened it, flipped through a few pages, and raised an eyebrow. "There's a gap of three hours between the time you found the body and the time you reported it. Why didn't you report the body immediately?"

This part? Not yet boring. Her eyes flicked in the direction of the room down the hall, where Spike was probably getting tired and bored and hungry too. Not a good thought. The notes probably read _'shifty eyes = axe-murderer.'_ "I--I just panicked. I thought I'd killed her. I was going to come here right away and...and turn myself in, but my sister and my boyfriend talked me out of it. I let them talk me out of it. He said--Spike said--she'd been dead for hours, so I couldn't have..." She was shaking. Relax. Breathe. Stop crushing the table. "It couldn't have been me hitting her that killed her. He thought we could find out who did if he...looked for clues. And then I remembered where I'd seen her before, so we came right over."

Ng sighed and switched off the tape recorder. "Ms. Summers, I've been on the force here in Sunnydale for almost twelve years, and I've seen a lot of unusual things, especially under the...previous administration. I've read Detective Stein's file on you--"

"Those are juvenile records!"

"You never petitioned to have them sealed." Ng blinked at her mildly. "I'm telling you this because I want you to understand that there's very little you can say that will surprise me, and with a mirror that big on the wall it's hard to miss the fact that Mr. Williams doesn't have a reflection. Are you certain there's nothing else you'd like to tell me?"

Part of her was still four, listening solemnly to her mother telling her that if she ever got lost, she should go tell a policeman. The other part was seventeen, kneeling stunned and terrified over Kendra's body. "I've told you everything I know. I really don't know how the body got there."

The detective held her eyes for a long minute, and then he nodded. "I think that's all we need from you at the moment, Ms. Summers," he said, standing and gesturing towards the door. "But if you remember anything else, please call. If we find sufficient evidence to make an arrest, and the state presses charges against Mr. Mears, your testimony could be required in court. Are you planning on leaving town at any point in the near future?"

She smiled, hoping it didn't look as feeble as it felt. "Stuck here like glue."

  
****

Spike was waiting for her in the squad room, folded up in a peeling vinyl chair, the fingers of one hand knotted in his unruly hair and a half-smoked cigarette dangling sullenly from his lower lip. He uncoiled the minute he saw her, and it wasn't till the rush of relief flooded through her that she realized she hadn't been certain he'd be there at all. She had, after all, used the Unforgivable Word.

But he was there, his shoulders set in rebellious lines and his eyes dark with worry and an almost belligerent need to be useful. As they walked out the front doors of the police station, he whipped off the motorcyle jacket and held it out. It was only slightly chilly, but she took it anyway, nestling into the Spike-shaped hollow of rayon and black leather. His clothes were never warm to the touch, but her own body heat worked its way into the leather, releasing an incense of smoke and Burberry Touch and that inhuman mingling of earth and darkness and guy-musk that was Spike-smell.

There was an hour yet till dawn. They walked down the dark, quiet street together, shoulder to shoulder, not quite touching. The coal-end of Spike's cigarette brightened and dimmed, dimmed and brightened with his irregular breaths. Buffy pulled his jacket tighter around her shoulders; there was still a lingering bite of winter in the pre-dawn air after all.

"What about the Rwasundi?" she asked at last.

Spike exhaled smoke, a dragon in the darkness. "Had David chuck 'em in the sewers; the scavengers'll get 'em. Bit of a waste, but we couldn't put 'em in normal inventory anyway."

No intelligent demons chopped up for sale. Right. He'd come up with that rule himself. To please her, but it had been his idea. Somewhere there was a Ph.D thesis in waiting about the demonic ecology of Sunnydale. "You didn't say anything to the police about Jonathan, did you?"

He looked offended. "'Course not. Won't matter, though; Mears and that sniveling bloke'll rat him out for spite. 'Sides, he's wanted for that bank job they did."

"Yeah, but if they don't know you caught his scent in the park..." She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. "God, I don't know. Maybe I should have told them. This is his third second chance."

"Don't think my nose is admissible in a court of law, love."

She thought about Detective Ng. "The basement was all innocent-looking. They must have cleaned up the blood and gotten rid of whatever they hit her in the head with."

Spike chuckled. "Blood will out. They've got this thing, saw it on CSI. Half-way decent forensics team--" He sucked on his cigarette, considering. "On the other hand, this is California."

An ancient, rusty truck chugged past, a mountain of newspapers piled on the wooden bed. The lanky teenager playing King of the Hill atop the newsprint fortress hucked a paper expertly over their heads and waved. Strange visitors from another world--normal people, doing normal things. Spike's hand brushed hers, a brief questioning touch. For a second she tensed, then took a deliberate side-step closer, slipping her own arm around his waist. The comfortable weight of his arm settled around her shoulders, and she leaned into his side, closing her eyes and pressing her cheek against the firm muscle of his chest. An involuntary spasm racked her--relief or guilt, she couldn't tell--and Spike's grip tightened for a moment. _Upon this rock I will have a spaz attack._ "What I said earlier...I didn't mean it."

"Yes, you did."

She tried to decipher his intonation. Was he hurt, or angry, or...? "Well, I'm sorry I said it anyway."

He accepted that with a nod. "Yeh, well, I wasn't exactly channeling Norman Vincent Peale myself." He walked another few steps, head down. "Don't treat me like a fucking cripple, all right?"

"I don't--" She shut up. Somewhere in the back of her head the words were still playing on continuous loop: _Angel would understand!_ And the bitter, snarling rejoinder, _No, he wouldn't. When Angel kills it's never by accident._

Of course, she hadn't killed anyone by accident either. Yet. Ted, falling down the stairs. Faith's stake, plunging into Finch's vulnerable human flesh. Her fist, slamming into Katrina's fragile human jaw... Someday, her luck would run out, and the body on the ground really would be her responsibility. And what then?

"It wasn't your fault." Spike broke into her guilt-o-whirl of reminiscence with dogged, uncomprehending stubbornness. "Even if it had been you that killed her, it would've been a sodding accident."

However frustrating his incomprehension, she couldn't beat understanding into him with fists or hard words. Spike grokked punishment, but atonement wasn't part of the vampire lexicon. He'd stretched, stretched maybe to his snapping point, far enough to touch _it wasn't your fault_ from _who cares?_ She'd have to reach the rest of the way.

And it was he, after all, who'd badgered her into noticing the clues guilt would have had her ignore. She tapped her chest. "Really doesn't matter, in here. It's always going to feel like my fault."

That little half-frown, the boyish pursing of his lips... He still didn't really get it. But he sighed, and accepted it. Took it in to turn over in whatever odd dark hours he devoted to pondering emotions he could no longer wholly feel. She bumped him with her shoulder. "Just hold me, OK? Holding is good."

His face was serious. "Good enough, love?"

She met his eyes, equally serious. "It's got to be, doesn't it?"

And together they headed homewards, walking the line between shadow and sunlight as the coming dawn lightened the eastern sky.

END


End file.
